DIRECTED BY: Jorge Delarosa, Wyl Price, Jim Johnson
FEATURING: Mike Akers, Hank Fiorini, Susan Martin, Lauren Ashley Carter
PLOT: FBI agent Stephanie Bellman—a man, by the way, and a sex addict—investigates some
very strange goings on in the sleepy burg of Mantua, Ohio, all of which seem to involve “The Organic Ones,” a murderous cult who are “harvesting” the earth’s “weeds,” i.e. the undesirable people polluting the planet.
COMMENTS: Mantua is the brainchild of the artist collective The Slow Mutants, based in NE Ohio. Comprised of 3 short films Black,” “Green,” and “Red,” with connective tissue added, the movie is fitfully entertaining in spots but the execution is just too amateurish to fully recommend. Which is too bad, because there’s just enough here to prove that there is some talent involved. The story suggests a variation on “Twin Peaks,” but even more tweaked and off-center. It’s not boring, and that’s the film’s biggest strength. What tries one’s patience, however, is the level of the performances and the backyard quality of the production which sandbag the ambitiousness of the project.
It’s not without merit—there’s no ineptness on display here. In my opinion, it’s more a matter of the filmmakers having bitten off more than they could chew at the time. As their craft improves, the final results will too—hopefully. In fact, I’d like to see them reboot this after they get a few more projects under their belts. Until that time, if you can sit through a comedic “Twin Peaks” variation with public access TV production values, give Mantua a try. But first, you might want to take a look at their upcoming punk rock documentary Gangrene, for some perspective.
Less than three months to go in the year, and we’re already focused on getting 2012 releases out of the way by year’s end. That doesn’t mean we’ll only be covering new movies, though, as the past year has brought us a wonderful bounty of important re-releases, Blu-ray upgrades and special editions to look at. We’ll start out next week with Mantua (2012) a 366 Underground entry that you just know is weird because it comes from a group that calls themselves The Slow Mutants. We’ll also consider Derek Jarman’s recently Blu-rayed adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1979)—it’s got a torch singer crooning a jazz standard while a gang of sailors on leave perform a dance number, and yet it may not be the weirdest version of the Bard’s final fantasy on film. On Wednesday comes another re-release, which also happens to be a long-time resident of our reader-review queue—the Quay brothers beautifully black and white first feature Insititute Benjamenta (1995), a surreal melodrama set in a school for servants with a pronounced Guy Maddin feel. And although it’s not a new release, Alfred gets into the Halloween spirit by kicking off his October coverage of the “quiet horrors” of producer Val Lewton with the classic tale of sexual repression, Cat People (1942).
You like weird search terms? We’ve get the weirdest search terms! After all, where else but 366 Weird Movies would someone go looking for information on “chinese movie dog nuts”? From the “so you think Google actually reads your search terms personally, do you?” files comes the bizarre search for “pirates.movie.is this movie a porn movie,if so than may u snd me some pictures please.” Speaking of movies that may be porn movies (though don’t snd us any pictures please), we couldn’t pass on mentioning the quaintly twisted “midget teen got the cane.” That weird fetishistic search leads us directly to our official Weirdest Search Term of the Week: “teen weired unwiered tubes.” We can understand people looking for teen weired tubes, but it’s the concomitant and apparently contradictory search for teen unwiered tubes that catapults this one to our Weirdest Search Term of the Week.
Here’s how the ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue stands: Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (next week!); The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky (re-review); Society; Final Programme; “Foutaises”; Bloodsucking Freaks; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.
IN THEATERS (WIDE RELEASE):
Frankenweenie: Tim Burton has struck out twice this year, garnering mediocre marks directing Dark Shadows and producing Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer. This stop motion kiddie horror, a remake of his pretty good 1984 short live-action film, shot in glorious black and white, is a pet project of Burton’s. In his third at bat, will the once-visionary auteur knock it out of the park, or at least get on base? Frankenweenie official site.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
The Double Steps [Los Pasos Dobles]: Various groups of people search the Sahara for a bunker covered in frescoes painted by an American expatriate artist. Reviewers have been stumped trying to describe the plot. Playing in NYC only this week. Los Pasos Dobles Facebook page (Spanish).
SCREENINGS (Sunday, Oct. 7, New York City, Film Forum):
Week End (1967): A weekend trip to the country turns into a surreal nightmare as a French couple find themselves stuck in an apocalyptic traffic jam. As they recently did with the Czech masterpieceDaisies, Janus films has refurbished another classic 1960s weird foreign film and unleashed it on an unsuspecting modern American public; please, keep it up! This print will be touring the larger and hipper North American cities through 2013; check Janus Films’ site for playdates.
NEW ON DVD:
Dark Shadows (2012): Read our capsule review and our other capsule review. We didn’t like this poorly conceived revamp (hee hee) of the Gothic soap from the Sixties, but this week has a Tim Burton theme, so if you must… Buy Dark Shadows.
“Found Footage Festival: Volume 6”: Before YouTube, there was VHS. Thankfully we have historians like the fine folks at the Found Footage Festival (and rivals Everything is Terrible!) to sift through the video dating, religious puppet show, and ferret care instructional tapes of yesteryear to bring us the funniest (and weirdest) video trash from the past. Buy “The Found Footage Festival: Volume 6”.
Iron Sky (2012): Nazis from the moon invade Earth. The early buzz was sky-high thanks to the nutty premise and an effective trailer, but after some early sightings of the space-fascists, people lost interest as the invasion grew nearer. Buy Iron Sky.
Dark Star (1974): John Carpenter’s student film is a spoof of 2001 with a talking bomb and a beach ball alien; it was a minor cult hit. This “Thermostellar Edition” contains the theatrical and director’s cut (confusingly, the director’s cut was the version released to theaters; it’s the same as the “theatrical” version but runs ten minutes longer). Buy Dark Star [Blu-ray].
Masters of the Universe (1987): He-Man (really? the hero is named He-Man?) must defeat Skeletor (really?) in this campy cult movie based on a TV cartoon based on a children’s toy from the 1980s. Hopefully, people won’t look back this fondly on the Transformers movies in 20 years. Buy Masters of the Universe [Blu-ray].
The Milk of Sorrow [La Teta Asustada] (2009): Magical realist tale with an interesting premise: women who are abused during pregnancy transmit their sorrow to their children through breast milk. Most critics found the pace poetic, others complained it was too slow, but all agree it features an interesting alternative use for potatoes. Buy Milk of Sorrow [Blu-ray].
Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection: Released in time to schedule a Halloween marathon, this set collects together Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Wolf Man (1941), The Phantom of the Opera (1943), and The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Bride is definitely the weirdest of these offerings, but the Universal horror cycle as a whole was much more influential than the sum of its parts. Essential indeed. Buy Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection [Blu-ray].
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006): A fast-food franchise builds a restaurant on the site of an ancient Indian burial ground, resulting in a plague of zombie chickens. Adding insult to injury, they perform song-and-dance routines before ripping your internal organs out. Watch Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead free on YouTube.
What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.
Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hiker (1953) is the first and only classic film noir directed by a woman. Lupino began her career as an actress in notable films such as They Drive By Night (1940), High Sierra (1941) (both costarring Humphrey Bogart), and The Hard Way (1943). She earned a reputation as a “hard luck dame” and “the poor man’s Bette Davis.” Lupino refused to be defined by categories and ventured into directing. Her first film as a co-director (uncredited) was Not Wanted (1949), a stark and candid film (for its time) about an unwed mother. While on suspension (for turning down too many sub-par roles) Lupino and her husband started an independent film company, The Filmmakers, producing several films which she wrote and directed. As a director she was dubbed “the poor man’s Don Siegel,” which goes to show that sophistic labels die hard.
Lupino’s status as a pioneer for women filmmakers cannot be underestimated. She wrote and directed B-styled films which often focused on serious feminist themes. Her Outrage (1950) brutally dealt with the topic of rape (sadly, the film remains unavailable, but Mike Lorefice’s review should certainly be read).
Lupino ended her directorial career in television, and among her credits in that medium are memorable episodes of Thriller (starring Boris Karloff), The Untouchables, and The Fugitive. Lupino’s innovative and daring success as a Hollywood filmmaker inspired an homage by jazz musician Carla Bley; it is a composition which has been much performed, most memorably by Paul Bley (Carla’s ex-husband) on his album “Open to Love.”
Lupino’s most acclaimed film is probably The Hitch-Hiker. Distributed by RKO, it is inspired by the true story of early 1950s serial killer Billy Cook. Lupino (who co-wrote the screenplay) creates a confidently bleak, taut atmosphere in The Hitch-Hiker. The pacing is psychologically relentless, and Lupino masterfully takes full advantage of claustrophobic compositions (in a car), an expansive, arid landscape, and the noirsh city at night.
On the run, killer Emmet Meyers (William Talman) kidnaps the two fisherman: Roy (Edmund O’ Brien) and Gilbert (Frank Lovejoy). Talman (best known as the nemesis of Raymond Burr’s Perry Mason) gives THE yardstick performance of unadulterated sadism.
Fortunately, Lupino does not succumb to exploitation-movie sermons: she does not take time to, filling the film’s 71 minute length full of exposed nerves. Lupino handles the material with astute sensitivity, directing three male actors without ever resorting to displays of chest beating machismo. The building tensions between the three men were unsettling enough that RKO head Howard Hughes denied original story credit to the (supposed) leftist writer Daniel Mainwaring. Hughes was convinced the story was a parable about Cold War paranoia and McCarthyism. Leave it to Hughes to be paranoid about depiction of paranoia. The Hitch-Hiker quickly became a cult hit for a reason: it is simply one of the best examples of Hollywood film noir.
Next week: Cat People begins our coverage on the films of Val Lewton at RKO.
Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!
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On the run, killer Emmet Meyers (William Talman) kidnaps the two fisherman: Roy (Edmund O’ Brien) and Gilbert (Frank Lovejoy). Talman (best known as the nemesis of Raymond Burr’s Perry Mason) gives THE yardstick performance of unadulterated sadism.